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Comment by mac_was | Hacker News Reader

That is funny looking at history where it actually never worked, you can have starving people in North Korea vs China which is a not socilism anymore from market perspective... I come from a post-socialist country, and when growing up in the 90s we and 90% of the society was so poor after 50 years of socialism that my parents could not afford a pair of Nike or Adidas. What me and most mates were wearing was Nice and Adidos... as a pair of oroginal Nike was like 1/3 of my mum or dad salary. So I’ll never say yes to any socialist ideas! As these ruined several countries: Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, Russia, Albania, Yugoslavia, Poland and at least a dozen of other countries from the other side of the Iron courtain.

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Socialism and capitalism have their warts. Thinking there's a perfect system is naive. Being uncritical of either system is a mistake. As soon as your system turns into a religion (faith) it's pretty much screwed.

Naming things is important and all, but I'd prefer to evaluate policies on their individual merits instead of simply classifying them as X is part of Y and total Y is bad therefore X is also bad.

Are worker co-ops bad just because they are socialist? Is it bad to regulate a company dumping chemicals in your drinking water because it saves them a few bucks?

On the flipside, is it bad to have reasonable pay discrepancies (not 300x, but maybe 8x) which markets naturally produce?

I think as a general rule we should strive to avoid concentrations of power in the hands of the few. Which has been a side effect of both capitalism and communism.

I'd think about all this from slightly different perspective.

Humanity evolution is clearly follows the trajectory with well known "strong points" (in math sense) Slaveholding, Feudalism, Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, …

Point (in math sense) has no dimensions so you cannot say "we are exactly at Capitalism now" but rather somewhere on that trajectory between strong points. Closer to Capitalism, closer to Socialism are the right terms I think.

It is obvious that, let's say, Europe now is somewhere in between of Capitalism and Socialism. And in 1900 it was around pure Capitalism point, in some countries between Feudalism and Capitalism.

And "Robots economy" will move us closer to Communism where 95% of population will not participate in goods/services production activities. So that will be that famous "... to each according to his needs" [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_abi...

Assuming "Robots economy" comes true, you're probably right, and it's a really interesting way to think about it. Definitely a bit scary.

It'd be interesting to compare the costs of production, sale prices, and work/life conditions of the people who produced an adidos vs an adidas.

I think that the parent poster was most likely referring to democratic socialism as practiced in much of the EU and Nordic countries as opposed to totalitarian communism or Stalinism as practiced in the countries that you listed.

The Nordic countries are not socialist. They have not seized the means of production and handed it to a poorly-incentivized bureaucracy that claims to speak for the public.

If you have private ownership of production you are still capitalist. All the Nordic countries do this. They are not so much socialists as welfare states. If we must have a welfare state, I would much prefer the "citizens as shareholders of the country" model with a basic income, rather than the overweening paternalism of current welfare states.

Those EU and Nordic countries are not democratic socialist though. The Prime Minister of Denmark repudiated Bernie's comments saying so. They even say they are capitalist with strong safety nets, which is not socialism.

I come from a post-socialist country, and when growing up in the 90s we and 90% of the society was so poor after 50 years of socialism that my parents could not afford a pair of Nike or Adidas.

Did they have a house though?

like most people nowadays you’re confusing socialism with communism.

socialism is already everywhere. communism on the other hand failed on all fronts.

Welfare-state capitalism is everywhere (at least in Europe).

The economic system in communist countries was generally called socialism, while 'communism' is used for the political movement and its ideology.

the welfare-state is social democracy. liberte, egalite, fraternite are essential socialist values. in the US medicare/medicaid are socialist programs.

Nope the person confusing communism and socialism is the person I am replying to hence my usage of word socialism.

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